Editor - Author Relations - Magical, Strained, Frustrating…
My friend and colleague, Brian Knight, posted an interesting and sort of depressing essay today over at STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED - I thought I’d chime in. Maybe it can be the day for this particular subject to come up in several places. Probably it will do little good but to provide some mutual support. For reasons you will find obvious as this progresses, it’s not going to be personal.
I don’t know how things used to be in the good old days, or if there even were any good old days when it comes to the relationship of editors and authors. (Agents figure into this as well, but for the most part, they walk a middle ground with a little more insight into both sides than either of the others can usually claim having into one another). These days, it’s an incredibly frustrating world to be part of.
On one side you have authors, toiling away, writing books, printing them (or formatting them into the proper type of file, in some cases) and sending them on their journey into whatever. Authors tend toward self-deprecation in private, bouts of doubt in their ability and relevance, and paranoia over being ignored or slighted. On the other side you have editors who will either read, ignore, reject, or otherwise deal with those same books. At least that is the skeleton of how it is supposed to work.
In the real world, it never seems quite so simple. There are a lot of ways to interact with and meet editors. Sometimes that interaction even serves a positive purpose, but as often as not what it does is to raise the author’s expectation of further professional interaction, and not always for any good reason. If you put an author and an editor in a bar, sooner or later that author will not be able to help finding a way to pitch to the editor. It’s expected, and usually the editor is prepared. Either he will be genuinely interested - boy that sounds wonderful - or tentatively interested - meaning he/she genuinely wants to see something you’ve mentioned to them and has every intention of retaining enthusiasm once your ways are parted - or platitudes will be offered that (while drinking, or even just dreaming can sound very much like the first two possibilities to an author).
What you seldom hear is - no, don’t send anything, I have so many manuscripts on my desk I can’t find my goldfish and the chances are I’ll never read it, or will forget I have it. You also almost never hear, well, I really can’t get to it in a reasonable time frame, but I know so and so over at so and so is looking for something like this. Or even, ‘that sounds about like five thousand other ideas and I don’t think it has much hope, try something different.’
This is where it all breaks down, I think. Sadly, we seem to exist in a world where authors and editors are afraid to just interact honestly. Authors are scared to death that if they say anything negative about an editor, or the way things are handled, they will be blacklisted, called a whiner, shunned, and scuttle their career. Evidence seems to point to some truth in this.
Editors seem afraid that if they quit telling every author they meet to go ahead and send them something, they’ll lose some status, or position in the esteem of both the author in question and the field in general.
I don’t know the answer to this. I’ve been ignored for years by editors who requested my work, had the manuscripts misplaced and lost and replaced and misplaced and lost again - have received cursory notes from third or fourth level readers on manuscripts personally requested by editors who never bothered to read them, have had an editor summarily reject a manuscript they never read, then hear me read it at a convention and ask me to send it to them - only to ignore it another two years and (you guessed it) never read it a second time. This never reading thing was obvious in the rejection, which seemed to have been written for some other book.
It’s a shame there can’t be a system that runs through manuscripts in a fair and timely manner, but there is (currently) no such thing in many cases, an the problem appears to be worst with those editors who are most willing to interact personally with authors. I suspect that they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and that this ends by becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
The same editors who may request and ignore are also at the same buying from others. It’s the way the business works. Some authors work with the same editor a long time, and you know they are going to get better treatment (who would expect otherwise) - and other authors are just more important fiscally - business is business. It’s the bottom end that needs fixing, I think. Sometimes an idea genuinely captivates everyone involved, and an idea like that is run with.
Beneath all of this somewhere is the slush pile, where most manuscripts find their final resting places. You can do things to help adjust your position in such a pile, but nothing changes the importance of the pile itself, in the general scheme of things.
The point of all of this is simple. As an author, try to remain pragmatic in your interactions with editors. Don’t hit them up over beer and take everything they say as gospel. If you get a very positive response in person and can’t raise them for six months in e-mail or on the phone, suspect that their enthusiasm has waned. Understand that as good a time as the two of you might have had last night at whatever convention you attended, it isn’t an entitlement to preferential treatment. It’s two ways. If you want an editor to be more than a casual acquaintance, you can’t talk to them only when you want to sell them something. If they don’t appear willing to interact beyond that “acquaintance” level, and you see no indication that whatever promise you believe you heard is going to come true, move on. Don’t wait two, three years to hear from someone who won’t even bother to return an e-mail…and don’t expect an e-mail every week from someone who is a very busy person. Find the middle ground…the practical ground…remember that it’s a business, and remember what famous folks have said about business and pleasure. Don’t be fooled, and don’t take things for granted.
Write. Send. Write some more. Follow-up. Send. Write. It’s the only way through. As I said in an essay on what to ignore during Nanowrimo (the search for editors / publishers / agents / promotion - etc) over at VINTAGE SOUL THE WEBSITE today… If you write one book and spend two years trying obsessively to sell it - that’s a FAIL. If you write that book, send it out, or hand it to your agent, and start writing the next, and the next, and the next - you’ll find the right connection somewhere along the line - assuming it exists. You have a much better chance selling a book if you write a dozen than if you write only one…and you have a much better chance getting your work in front of someone if you get it out to a dozen markets instead of waiting years to hear from someone who - if they meant what they said - would at least respond to your occasional query notes.
And I don’t want to sound fatalistic. The above-mentioned things happened, but along the way I met other editors, publishers, and of course my agent, who does all the hard work for me now. He might argue that the writing is harder, but I know better. I have had some wonderful editors, have been fortunate enough to sell about sixteen novels and a boat-load of stories. I’d say I can’t complain, but I am VERY good at it…so I won’t say that. I’ll say - I prefer not to complain.
Now…off to be productive in other ways…
-DNW
